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Kent & Fern Frost February 1994 - 1 -

Kent & Fern FrostInterview with Kent & Fern Frost on 12 February 1994. Interviewers are Gary Cox

(Q1) and Bill Booker (Q2)(Questions)

Q1 (Gary): Okay we’re here in Monticello with Kent Frost, Fern Frost, Gary Cox,

Bill Booker is here with me and this is Saturday, February 12 and we’re talking about

the history of the Maze and Robbers Roost area. Well, I’d just like to talk about those

early trips in there into the Land of Standing Rocks and Doll House. What first

attracted you to the area? Had you seen it from the needles or…?

Kent(K): Well, Fern and I had made several trips over in that area, soon as they made them

bulldozer trails down off from that Land’s End country and down off that Shinarump rim and

through that part. And we had done quite a lot of exploring there and we were alwys curious

about going over toward the Doll House. And I had hiked on that horse trail that goes through

there over to Spanish Bottom. I hiked over it to Lizard Rock and I knew about it. And so we

worked throught the winter time getting organized for the trip. And we were going over there

to take our vehicles in there and explore the country. And, anyway, we invited Randall

Henderson to go with us and he was the publisher of Desert Magazine. And we’d been

advertising for several years about our jeep tour business in his Desert Magazine. And a lot

of the people who came with us on our tours were reading our advertisements. And they

were the type of people who liked to go out camping in rugged country and explore things. So

that was just a natural place for us to buy commercial advertising. And we started the jeep

trips business in 1953. And so by the time we got goin’ pretty well why then we organized

this trip in 1957 to go over there to where the Doll House is, as far as we could with our

jeeps. And so we had it all arranged with dates set and everything. And apparently Lert

Knee was down there in southern California. He went to visit Randall Henderson. And so

Randall told him he was comin’ up here with us on a jeep trip in a couple of weeks. And so

Lert he got on the telephone I guess down there at that time, and he phoned me up and


wondereded how I was goin’ in there, if I knew a good route. And I said, oh yeah, I think it’d

be easy enough to go in along that old horse trail. I walked over through that, most of it, and

you can get through that. And so anyway I guess it was just a few days after that, why him

and Joe Muench and his wife come up there and went charging off out there in the Doll

House area in their Jeep station wagon. And so anyway, after they’d got back from there,

why Joe Muench, he came here to our house one day and told us they’d just been there and

they thought it a nice place and everything. And so anyway I guess with the instructions that

Lert Knee got from me (I didn’t know he was planning on goin’ down there just a few days

later, or else I probably wouldn’t have given him the instructions)… But anyway he was

around braggin’ at first how he was the first one to go to the Doll House area with his…

makin’ a road over there. But then the word got around that he’d got all the information from

me just a few days before he went in there - a few days before we went. And so then I guess

he kind of got censored or something about all his big exploring trip down there. But we had

been in a lot of times and figured out the route and how we could get in there. And so we did

have a real good trip going in. And then after that we did run a lot of our commercial trips to

the Standing Rock country. And in our tour business we generally had 6-day camping trips

scheduled and we’d generally take a circle route - take in a big part of the country around on a

6 day trip. And we did get a lot of good people. And at that time the only ones who’d think

about going on that kind of a trip were the ones who were interested in getting out and seeing

new country. And they were able to explore places where there hadn’t been lots of people

going before also. And so we did start up a business and we enjoyed it and we run that Kent

Frost Canyonland tours for 25 years before we retired. And another thing, while we were in

that business along and after we had got a little better aquainted with the Maze country, then

Melvin and Rosalie Goldman from Chicago came out on a jeep trip in 1959. So we took them

and their three kids on a trip down into the Needles country and Canyonlands area. And then

they were the type that wanted to do some real extreme exploring. So I took them on a lot of

rough hiking trips. And the first hiking trip we went on was down through Grand Gulch to

see the Indian ruins and all that beautiful stuff that’s in Grand Gulch and see how it was. And

they liked that one so well that we planned a trip hiking through the Maze area. And I had


found a way to get down into the… from Elaterite Basin down into Horse Canyon close to

where the Maze overlook is now. And anyway I found that route down there the way the

trail goes into the National Park Service unit at this time. And I think I was the first one to

take photographers down to see the harvest scene to take pictures of that one. And I still say

that’s one of the most spectacular pictographs that I’ve ever seen. It’s a great one.

Q1: Did you take Dean Brimhall down there?

K: Well, I was down there quite a while before Dean Brimhall. And I told him how to get over

into that part of Horse Canyon. And he went down there and I guess he couldn’t follow my

trail I went on, so he took some ladders down and made some ladders over two or three ledges

to get down into the place where I came up. But with Goldmans we hiked across from the

Doll House area into one of the canyons that drain over into Horse Canyon and we came out

down there just below the Chocolate Drops on that canyon and then we seen The Harvest

Scene also while we were down in there. And then from there we hiked up the main canyon

that goes around below Elaterite Basin that drains from Lizard Rock and Standing Rock down

into that part of Horse Canyon. We hiked in all them little canyons that branch in that

direction. And then we hiked down the main Horse Canyon to where it pours off into the

Green River on that trip. And anyway they were good hikers and we’d go lots of miles in

them days.

Q1: That’s a lot of miles.

K: We did a lot of exploring. I was always interested in those old stock trails going through

the country. So I’d get on one of them and find out how to go from one section of the country

over into the other. And that’s the way I got into the Water Canyon and that part of the

Maze the first time, was following that trail that went down below Beehive Arch and right on

down in and around. And the National Park Service trail now it doesn’t follow the horse trail

which is an easy route getting on over to Water Canyon.


Q1: I’ve been trying to get them to change that. That might happen one of these

days.

K: Well, I’ve just wondered what the reason was why they did go that route unless they

couldn’t find the other way.

Q1: That was it, they couldn’t find the other one. They didn’t know the country very

well.

K: Well, Owen Severance, I thought he was the one that laid out a lot of them trails for the

Park Service. And he knew about that because he went on a hiking trip with us over to Water

Canyon on one trip.

Q1: Well that trail was “officially” established in ’86 by some people from the

Resource Management Division of Canyonlands and a District Ranger, Ed Forner, and

they went and did an archeological clearance along the trail and established it as an

official trail which was to be maintained. But they did miss quite a bit of the old stock

trail. I agree it’s much easier.

Q2 (Bill): I have a question. Did you drive into Standing Rocks and then hike over to

the Doll House or did you guys actually drive?

K: Well we drove right on down into there. We camped, just before you go around that last

pour-off down the canyon and then when you get down it you can drive around into the Doll

House there. We camped just above there. And we hiked in that area the first trip down. And

it was later that somebody else extended the jeep trail down over that there steep place and

on down into the Doll House. But we didn’t make that first trip in there, that jeep trail.


Q2: Also when Lert went in, apparently he went off the big ridge and down into North

Hatch and then into Waterhole, and I was just curious did you know if that was the

main road before the Flint Trail was upgraded or….?

K: The first two or three trips we went down into that country we went off from The Big

Ridge down at Land’s End they called it and they called it the South Trail or Squaw Trail. But

it washed out later and then it became impassable. In fact we were down there on a jeep trip,

Fern and I, with another person, when a big storm come through. And anyway we could see

the lightning down over Navajo Mountain just as it was getting dark. And we camped just a

little bit south of that one called Standing Rock out there. So we, uh, ..I don’t know, we drove

out there on that so we could camp on smooth rock. And we thought that would be a good

place to camp. But anyway we got everything ready and went to bed. And then all of a

sudden we could hear thunder in the distance. Just great, rumbling thunder, almost

continuous. And then about that time why (it was a dark black night) and about that time

why, here was all these… a whole flock of pinyon jays were up above, flyin’ around in the

sky there in the middle of the night time. This was about two or three hours after dark. And

these pinyon jays were flyin’ around, and here’s almost light, continuous light, from the

lightning. And by that time we were getting up. And so we just threw our sleeping bags over

the back of the old jeep. And we didn’t roll ‘em up or anything. We just threw ‘em over there

and put the canvas on and lashed it down real quick and went back over to Standing Rock.

And it just poured rain and poured rain. And we were in that little overhang and we had good

protection down underneath that Standing Rock. And then the next day we went back out

and went up that Squaw trail, (that was the only way that we’d been using at that time), and

went up it. But the road had been cut out and there was a great big gully right along the edge

of the wall and it left just a little island of dirt up between the big gully and the drop-off. And

I went up along it about ..oh, a hundred feet I guess, just barely wide enough to keep that jeep

on that one. And went up that one. And then there was a boulder slid down into the road and

we had to dig out from behind the boulder so we could go around it that way because there

wasn’t room to get around to the outside of the boulder. And went up that one. And then


another boulder we had to do the same way on only it wasn’t so big so it didn’t take so long

to make the road around the inside of it. And then we finally got up on top and camped there

that night. And anyway, it rained a little bit that night on us too. And anyway settin’ there

under a tree with a box of dynamite. It had a piece of tarpaper over the top of it. So anyway

I fired into that with my .22 and set it off so somebody wouldn’t get foolin’ around the

dynamite and it made a big bang. We went on up then and we got to that Twin Corral Flats

where we got in a lot of flooded out area. And we had to make great big detours in several

places to get up on the ground that wasn’t full of quicksand and great big gullies and stuff like

that at Twin Corral Flats. And so we finally come out at Hanksville and we found out that

there had been a flood down on the Dirty Devil River of 19,000 second feet [cubic feet per

second] of water. It had just come out of that one rain storm. And after we got to there we

went down and crossed the Hite ferry and on back to Monticello. But anyway we found out

also that that same storm came up all the way kind of along the Colorado River towards

Moab and flooded out Moab and went right on through the country. And then another time

while I was down in there also here come a big storm up from Navajo Mountain right on

following the Colorado River up. And we were at that Cove Canyon at that time. And it

poured and poured on us and we just got across Cove Canyon before the flood came down it.

But anyway going from there on down around to Hite it hadn’t especially flooded that part

of the country. It hadn’t rained there. But anyway, after I got back from that trip why I

found out that that big rainstorm had continued on up to Moab and flooded everything

around there also. I thought that was quite interesting about the area.

Q2: The first of it that you follow when you went into the Doll House, was

that…there’s a road now that comes from Hite that goes into Waterhole, was that road

there or was that part of that horse trail?

K: Well that first road left North Wash and went up along the Colorado River for quite a long

ways and then they built a dugway out of the Colorado River up on the bench just above the

Dirty Devil River and then they went up the Dirty Devil River about four miles and crossed


and got above that Cedar Mesa Sandstone area and then on up then, all the way then on up

to the Waterhole Flats area. That connected up to them other roads and also with the road

that went over Sunset Pass and over to the Dirty Devil River and up to that part of the

country, that Poison Spring Canyon.

Q2: Where it crosses the Dirty Devil I’d heard it referred to as a sheep crossing. I

guess at one time it was a stock trail that got upgraded. I heard they drilled out there

or something.

K: Well, there was a trail that crossed…well, yeah I guess that’s where they went down to

the Dirty Devil River but also from the Dirty Devil River there used to be a stock trail that

come right down right close to where it poured into the Colorado River. There was some

slopes down there that a horse trail come right from the Colorado River up that way to get on

the bench then headin’ east toward that country. But that was just a real long old rugged jeep

trail and then finally I think it was in 1960 or sometime that an oil company built a big, wide,

graded road all the way from Hite up around there then and followed around there and made it

wider and drilled a well at Cove Canyon. And that was several years later. And then that

improved the road quite a bit. But then later it washed out so much that it didn’t help

anything in the end.

Q1: You said that you were following a horse trail around the head of Teapot Canyon.

So there was a trail?

K: Oh yes there was a real heavy stock trail that went right from the Waterhole Canyon right

on up around Teapot Canyon and all the way right on straight over there. And it ‘d been

used a lot.

Q1: Had anybody driven on it until you did?


K: No, they hadn’t. The year before we went somebody had driven up, oh I guess part way

around that Teapot Canyon area and then they turned around and came back out.

Q1: So in driving it for the first time did you pretty much follow the horse trail or did

you have to deviate from it.

K: Well, no, mostly it was right on the horse trail. Yeah, and in a way it was too bad because

that was a real neat historical horse trail. You can follow it easy on foot, you know, up

through there.

Q1: So where did the horse trail go after it got around Teapot? Did it drop into

Ernie’s Country or did it continue on into the Standing Rocks?

K: Well, it went around and dropped into Range Canyon and then that joined that other big

trail that comes from Sunset Pass over there and then down into Range Canyon. But then it

was easy to follow though, it was real easy.

Q1: But it didn’t go on then toward Lizard Rock. It dropped into Range Canyon? The

old stock trail? So you were pretty much pioneering the route from there on in, not

following any trails?

K: [New Addition: In Range Canyon there was a branch going sort of southeast and through a

graben to the Doll House Canyon and up it to Doll House. This trail is now in use for hikers

going to the Doll House area. K.F. 4/5/03] Well, I know from Range Canyon it just still

continued right straight on eastward up through there, come over to Lizard Rock.

Q1: Oh, it did go to Lizard Rock?


K: Yeah, it went right around on that bench all the way to Lizard Rock out there too. And

then there was another trail that went down a little bit lower from Range Canyon. And I

never did follow it all the way through. But I’ve been on both ends of it. And when I was

with Bates Wilson and the BLM and the Utah State Parks on one trip to show ‘em a lot of

the things I’d found over in the Standing Rock country…and anyway we kind of made a jeep

trail from the Doll House area down that main canyon and it was real rugged getting over a

couple of jumps there and then that put us down on the next little valley below. And it’s not

very far straight on, straight southward on that route, to look into Cataract Canyon. And so

after I went with them, why then I took my jeep parties down that trail several times to look

into Cataract Canyon. And when I was with Bates Wilson anyway we went down into that

next valley (I think it has a name but I don’t remember what it was but there is some small

pictographs along on the wall in two or three places) but we drove westward then up the

valley to where another canyon comes down from the Fins and that part. And I guess it

would be the west end of Lizard Rock area. And then when we drove up that one quite a

ways and here was an old cowboy camp there and one of these little scrapers; it was about

that wide, that they used to pull with a horse, you know, to move dirt over to make a

reservoir with. And they had two or three little pans there in that canyon. And anyway it

was right at that place where the BLM jeep, it was a military model, and it had the high speed

differentials and so anyway it wouldn’t gear to quite low enough for that rough driving, and

they broke their front axle on that. So they pulled the front hub off and took out that stub

axle and that part and then put it back together. And so they drove it all the way back out of

there then on rear wheel drive. And they had trouble in places but they finally made it out

alright. We’d hook onto ‘em and pull ‘em over places where they couldn’t make it

themselves. And they got out of that one. And they left that stub axle layin’ on a rock right

there. I guess it’s still down there, I don’t know. It was about that long. It was a model that

had two joints fit together and there was four ball bearings between each one of them joints so

that it’d work just as well on the stub.

Q2: So, before Canyonlands, when Bates was down there looking..


K: Yeah, that was several years before it was made a National Park.

Q2: Were the BLM people out of Price, do you remember? I’m curious about that.

K: About what?

Q2: Where were the BLM people from, do you know?

K: I don’t know. They was probably from the Moab office, I don’t know just where.

Q1: Was there a guy from Utah Highway Department there too?

K: Well, no it would be the Utah State Parks and Recreation Department, I think. They went

with us on several promotion and advertising trips into the Needles and around places like

that too. And also the Utah Fish and Game Commission would be represented quite often on

some of them promotional trips for publicity.

Q1: Did the trail that you followed from Range Canyon to Lizard Rock, did it connect

up with the Spanish Bottom Trail at all? Was there a connection?

K: Well, yes, everything kind of led right to that Spanish Bottom Trail. And I have always

thought that that was the real route that the Spaniards used. And Pearl Baker, she was raised

over there in the Robbers Roost country and she knew a lot of the old outlaws and a lot of

the early history of the country and she always swore that it was the Spanish Trail, you

know and they used it a lot as an alternate route. And she did a lot of research on it. And she

gave me a copy of, I think, most of her research on that Spanish Trail. And let’s see… it

would come out over Elephant Hill Country and joined up with the other one went up


through Dry Valley and Hatch Wash and East Canyon. Or else it could split off and go over

on the Elk Mountain country and down through there also.

Q1: Did you ever find anything, that maybe the Spaniards had left behind or did you

see any Spanish inscriptions anywhere along the trail or in the area.

K: Well, yes, I was down there and going around from the Flint Trail around towards

Teapot Rock and we stopped to look into the head of Range Canyon so they could take some

pictures of that big view out across the country southward and one of the folks from Denver

Colorado picked up a piece of pottery about an inch in diameter or something like that. And

it was brown color and it looked entirely different than any of the Anasazi pottery or

anything like that so he took it back to Denver with him. And he was curious about it so he

took it to the Denver Museum. And they said that it was Spanish pottery that had been

made long about the 1500 era. And it was about the size enough to have made a drinking cup,

you know, a mug, something like that or something. And that’s the only thing we’ve ever

found that would connect back that far. But you see the Spaniards used that Spanish Trail

from around 1600 on until 1840. There was lots of traffic on it at all times.

Q1: Do you remember the guy’s name that found that?

K: Oh yeah, his name was Yash Oka and he is a Japanese. But I think he lives at Page,

Arizona now. And he went on a lot of different trips with us. And he also did a lot of river

trips through Cataract Canyon and places like that.

Q1: Do you happen to know if that pottery is still at the Denver Museum?

K: Well, I don’t know what. I’ve never talked to him since I got so curious about it. I’ve

never seen him since then. But I would like to stop in Page and see him some day and find out

what happened to that piece of pottery.


Q1: Did you hear any stories about any other people finding anything along there

left by the Spaniards or…?

K: Well, not really. But just recently, the last few days, why I heard that this Don Burge

whose in charge of the Price Museum of Natural History was just recently out on the San

Rafael Swell and lookin’ around on the Spanish Trail area and they found a lot of metal

artifacts – a gun barrel, a piece of armor, and parts of other equipment that could be

connected to the old Spaniards.

Q1: Was there any… um…when you first went into that country, any roads dropping

down into the Elaterite Basin and out toward the Maze Overlook? Or did that come

later?

K: Well, down at the foot of Flint Trail they did take a drilling rig down there to drill for oil.

That was way back in the… I guess in 1920s or something. There was two of these here drill

bits, you know, they was about six inches in diameter or something. And probably about 8 or

10 feet long. And they were layin’ right by the side of the road right at the foot of the Flint

Trail that they had left there. And I never did see where that derrick was at. But Arthur Ekker

said that it was in the canyon right there, just a little ways below the rim. But other than that

I didn’t know… I didn’t ever see it.

Q1: Well, there’s a road that drops from…well where the Flint Trail goes down and

levels off a little bit then on the Shinerump then drops down over the rim and into the

main fork of Big Water Canyon. Was that built by that oil company in the 1920s or is

that something from the mining of uranium?

K: Well I don’t know except that old steam boiler is layin’ down there on that North Canyon

Trail where it goes out.


Q1: Is that the road you took when you first went to the Maze Overlook area? Not

where it goes now?

K: Well yeah, right along the same route that it goes now. There were seismograph crews that

had been in there, I think. Because we was following seismograph trails.

Q2: So in your book you say they went from a stock trail that the miners had bladed

the Flint Trail was that for that drill rig or seismic work or…?

K: No that’d be for this drill rig that they moved down way back in the early ‘20s or

sometime. But I guess they could see that… they seen that where that oil was seepin’ out

way down there near Elaterite Basin. So they thought ther’d be oil all over the country up

there. But I used to pick up them black rocks and burn ‘em in the campfire and I’d get a

smell of burnt oil.

Q2: Wasn’t there a story about somebody said they took a drill rig and they lowered it

off the cliff, it was an old boiler?

Q1: That was Lert who said they used cables to get those boilers down the Flint Trail.

What they made, they modified in the ‘20s. I just wondered if there was…I found some

sections of trail that looked like a stock trail, much older, and not something you

would take a boiler down. That might have been the original Flint Trail. Did you

ever hike down? Old switchbacks?

K: Nope, I never did. I think though that when I first went down there there was part of an

old two wheel cart sittin’ down there close to where them drill stems were sitting too. And

that was at the foot of the Flint Trail. And that had been there for a long time before they

bulldozed the trail down too. So it’d probably been moved in with horses. So they must have


been able to move wheeled vehicles down through there. And I would think that they’d have

to, to take the drillin’rig and that stuff and wagons to transport all their stuff, I would think.

Q1: There are a couple of places. One of the old, I assume that’s proabably the one

they took the boilers down, parallels the way the Flint Trail goes now, and the other

one, the old switchbacks, the old horse trail, probably couldn’t get wheeled carts or

anything down. It starts out near the Flint Trail Overlook. There’s an old stove there

and a bunch of tin cans. It starts switchbacking..…you loose it after first hits the road.

You said there were some sheepherders in your book when you were down there in

the Standing Rocks. You ran into sheepherders?

K: Ah, yes. After we went in there the first time, they’d been running sheep. I think some

folks from Price, that run sheep in there. And, uh, I think that they continued that practice

from way back in the early days. And along about that itme there was a sheepherder down

there that would butcher a sheep. And he somehow he run the knife into his leg and he cut his

leg and bled to death. And that was along in the 1950s, I think, is when that happened. But

yeah, we talked to the sheepherder a few times.

Q1: Where was he? In Range Canyon?

K: Well he was in the Elaterite Basin.

Q1: Elaterite Basin?

K: Yeah.

Q1: Did you ever see him out in Range Canyon? Standing Rocks?


K: No. When we went in there on one of our exploring trips there was two wild mules down

in Waterhole Flat. And that was in April when we went there on that trip. And then we were

down there…oh, three or four weeks later and we seen four cowboys in at Waterhole Flat.

And I think they’d come in across the Dirty Devil River. Up above when they come in with

the jeep and they had a little two-wheel trailer and they were bringin’ in some horses also.

And they caught them mules and took them out. But they come in there to that Waterhole

Flat. And then the next year they run some cows in there and they had cows in there for a

few years there on the Waterhole Flats. And then later they moved out and then somebody

from Hanksville moved in with some cows and they’d bring them up to Waterhole Flats. And

they had their camp in one of them branches of Spring Canyon, I believe.

Q1: They never got up north of Waterhole Flat? in your trips into the Maze and

Standing Rocks you never saw anybody in Standing Rocks or Ernies Country running

cows or sheep ?

K: Well, no. But the Ekkers they run their cows down in Elaterite Basin all the time. But I

don’t think they took ‘em over down to Waterhole Flats.

Q1: We’re trying to determine when Ernies Country and the Standing Rocks area was

last grazed.

K: Have you been in contact with that Ned Chaffin from California?

Q1: No. You mentioned in your book that you knew the Chaffins that were running

at Hite.

K: Well, that see, the brother to Arthur Chaffin who run the Hite Ferry. But anyway I met

this Ned Chaffin down at Squaw Flats campground when they had the 20th anniversary of the

park or something. And I talked to him quite awhile. And anyway he was one of the


Chaffins who run the livestock into that Standing Rocks area, around Lizard Rock and up

through there. And I had quite a conversation with him. And he come back the year after that

and took a trip over toward…let’s see, Waterhole Flats and they was looking for a big cave

south of Waterhole Flats that was supposed to be full of Indian ruins. And I never did find

out if they found the cave or not. But I did write to him and he said that they never did find

the cave. But anyway, the way that I would think it’d be is just by that Ocean Point, it’d be

kind of west of that, in that canyon that drains off west of Ocean Point. And I never did get

right down in there to see if there was a big cave there or not.

Q2: Where abouts in California does Ned Chaffin live?

K: Well, it’d be in the southern part. I might have his address. It’s been several years since I

wrote to him.

Q1: But in all your trips in there you never did see any cows or sheep or cowboys in

Standing Rocks, Doll House, or…?

K: Well, yeah , they camped there at Waterhole Flat a lot where that big pothole is. And they

had a winter camp there for several years. That was the group that moved in about 1958, I

think it was. And they were there for two or three years. Then they moved out. And then

the other guy from Hanksville come in there to Waterhole Flats and he run cows in there for

years and years. I thought they were doing it up until about three or four years ago.

Q1: Nobody north of Teapot Canyon?

K: I don’t think so.

Q1: Okay, well, thanks, I wasn’t sure. We were trying to figure out how long that’s

been ungrazed in there and haven’t been able to find much out about that. Do you


have any idea who built the old stock trails, the one going out to WaterCanyon, over

the ridge and up and out of Shot Canyon? With all the steps?

K: Well, I thnk the Chaffins built most of them trails. There was Art…I mean, Lou Chaffin

and Ned Chaffin were running stock in there, I think.

Q1: Did you ever go down that trail that comes from Chimney Rock ..I’ll show you

here on the map…from Chimney Rock into this side canyon of The Maze?

K: Uh, no.

Q1: Now that’s an old stock trail and I’d like to find out some of the history of that

one. It’s deteriorated a lot but there are a few places on it where there are some steps

and places where they built the trail to get the stock down in there.

K: Well, that Chimney Rock used to be called the Candlestick Rock. And when we went in

there the first few times there was a great rock sitting on top of it, looked just like a flame.

And that’s why it was called Candlestick. And then after it fell over then they started calling

it Chimney Rock, I think.

Q1: You mentioned Henderson Arch in your book. I’d like to find out where that is.

We might have changed the name.

K: Where’s Lizard Rock?

Q1: Here’s Lizard Rock.

K: Well, it’s the one that’s just south of this, south of Lizard Rock.


Q1: Is it maybe what they’re calling Muffin Arch now or Tibbett Arch?

K: I think it’s Tibbett Arch.

F: Can’t miss it, it’s a beautiful arch.

Q1: Yeah, Tibbett Arch is really conspicuous from the road.

K: Yeah, that’d be the one.

Q1: Okay. Do you know anything else about the names…The Wall, Lizard Rock, the

Plug, Standing Rock…did they have different names at one time?

F: Beehive Arch, is that on there?

K: We called it the Wall because it had windows in it. We started calling it that.

Q1: So you named that one?

K: Possibly.

F: Jasper Canyon; that was Defiance Canyon.

Q1: Lert Knee told me that Standing Rock when he first went in, was called the

Totem Pole. Did you call it that?

K: I never did hear it called that.

Q1: Ward Roylance also said it should have been named the Totem Pole.


Fern: Maybe that’s where it come from.

Q1: Yeah, maybe, he named the rock.

K: Well, yea. I was sorry to hear that Ward Roylance died. He was a great old guy.

Q1: I’m sorry too. The Chocolate Drops..do you know about that name, where that

came from?

K: I think Dick Smith started calling it Chocolate Drops when he was flying trips over in

there with his airplane.

Q1: Well Jack Bickers claims that…and Michael Kelsey in the guide books claim

that it should be called the Chocolate Bars. Did you ever hear it called the Chocolate

Bars?

K: Well maybe that’s what they called it first, I don’t remember.

Q1: And then it turned into the Chocolate Drops? Did you ever get up on Pete’s

Mesa?

K: Yes, I’ve been up there several times.

Q1: Another thing we’re trying to find out…the Nature Conservancy and some of the

people at the Resource Management in Canyonlands are thinking that Pete’s Mesa is

a relict area - never had cows or sheep up there. Did you ever see…(Tape runs out)

[Continued on next side..some discussion apparently was lost]


I’ve got some letters of inquiry from people writing books on the area. They’ve heard

a lot of stories from cowboys, I think they even heard from some of the Chaffins, that

they say they had sheep up there.

K: Well I understood that there was a trail up from way over here on the north end someplace

getting up on to it, but I didn’t look around there. I didn’t go all the way around it real

carefully.

Q1: Well there’s some routes up on top of it but no place that I think a sheep could

erver go. A big horn sheep, yes, but a domestic sheep or a person on horseback…

K: Well, I always went just out this route here and up this way.

Q1: That seems to be the easiest way up that I’ve found. I’ve been all the way around

it and that, you have to hop over all those boulders and everything, it seems unlikely

to me that they would take sheep up that.

K: Well, down in this Jasper Canyon, I went down there one time and there was a buck deer

in there - a medium size buck. And I seen it. And it was in there for three or four years and

then it disappeared and it wasn’t in there anymore. And I couldn’t imagine how it ever got

there unless it come from down below someplace.

Q1: Uh-huh. So when you went in and dynamited that last little bit…where was that?

Could you point that out?

K: Where’s the spring at?

Q1: Well, here’s one of them. There are two springs and this would be the upper

spring.


K: This would be the upper spring? Well, see this cove that;’s right here? It might be that

cove right there, right at the head of that where the trail went.

Q1: Okay, I know that route. That’s kind of what I was thinking. And you cut some

steps as well?

K: Well there’s a lot of natural steps going up the last part of it.

Q1: Oh those were there when you first went up it? Okay. So what was the story on

the name of that?

K: Oh, about Jasper Canyon? Well I had tried several times to get into it and so I just said

“Oh, that defies my efforts of getting in there” and so that’s why I called it that one, was all,

the only reason.

F: And you sent it back to Washington and they agreed to it but then it came back Jasper

Canyon.

K: Well, yeah, they accepted that name all right.

Q2: Did the cowboys have names for these places, do you know? A lot of times

livestockmen will have names that don’t appear on maps anymore.

K: Well, I know that’s what happens. There’s a lot of things that have local names that

aren’t on the maps. I tried to find the name that the local people call things but a lot of the

times I’ll just go ahead and start calling them something else. Some might work.

Q1: Do you know how Shot Canyon got its name?


K: Well, yeah, Chaffin told me that they had to do a lot of blasting on that. And so they just

blasted it out and every time they’d shoot out a shot, why, they’d make it a little bit closer to

getting down there in the canyon. So that’s just from blasting is all. That’s how it got its

name. Down here at the Doll House, I didn’t know if you’d found that and knew where that

old camp was right before you get there. There’s an old cowboy camp there and there’s some

old harnesses hanging in the tree and there’s this plow that they’d used to plow dirt out with,

that was sitting there. And there was about twenty empty gallon wine jugs layin’ around

there. And anyway, I had my trailer in there on one trip and so when we come back out I

took that…loaded that plow on the trailer. And later I gave that to the National Park Service

down there at Moab along with a lot of other stuff I’d found over in there. And they were

supposed to give it to the Moab Museum. Well, you’re goin’ down the valley anyway and

when you get down this valley here someplace…where it’s at…and it’s along on the left hand

side of the road going into the country. But it’s when you’re going right down the bottom of

the wash, just, oh probably a quarter of a mile or something after you enter into it. That’s

where they had that camp. And it’s in where there‘s a lot of big pinon trees and stuff in there.

And they had a dam across a little old gully to give water for their stock and things like that.

And that was maybe a sheep camp.

Q1: How about the Golden Stairs? Did you use that at all?

K: No, I never did go on that. I didn’t have any occasion to and when we went on the regular

trips we didn’t have very much time for exploring around. And so I didn’t need to walk them

around.

Q1: Did you ever hear anything about the history of that?

K: Well, no, only that the stock men when they wanted to get over into Elaterite Basin they

had that for…I guess it’d be kind of a shortcut goin’ over there. You’d think that the real


rugged trail up through there would take more time than coming up to the head of that Range

Canyon and out around on that Shinarump Rim to get in there, I don’t know. I guess it saved

a few miles.

Q1: Yeah, it’s quite a ways around there. It used to appear on the old maps as a road,

a jeep road and people were saying “Oh, it used to be but the Park closed it down.” As

you know it could never have been. A lot of people wish it were, because it’d save a lot

of time, driving around. So did you run into many miners down there on your trips in?

K: No, not really. They had explored all them Shinarump Rims pretty well. But I guess along

about 1960 we were going over to the Standing Rocks on a trip and we come up through Hite.

And I guess after we got about a mile from where the highway goes across there now, why

here were two guys walking down towards us. And I think it was in August. It was real hot

weather. And, we asked ‘em where they was goin’, oh, they was goin’ to Farmington, New

Mexico, that’s where our boss is. And they was real mad at their boss because he had left

them up there somewhere near the Dirty Devil River at Fiddler Canyon or one of them. And

he was supposed to be back in four days and he hadn’t showed up for about a week so they

run out of food so they were wlking back out. And so, anyway, we opened up a watermelon

there and set there and ate that and we filled up their jugs with water and they went on down

and hitchhiked back to Farmington. And we went over to Standing Rocks area. But anyway,

I guess that was the main people we’ve seen that had mining interests there.

Q1: So a lot of those roads went in before you started taking trips out there?

K: Yes, that’s how we got down into that Waterhole Flats, really, is on them miners’ roads,

you see. And so they just prospected that country real seriously.

Q1: A lot of that happened before 1957?


K: Yeah, They did have a mine up there somewhere near the Dirty Devil River. I never was

to it. But they was supposed to have some pretty good ore but, anyway, I don’t think they

ever hauled any of it out.

Q1: They had a mine and we went and saw it with Ward Roylance this last summer

in North Hatch, a little bit west of South Trail, Squaw Trail. Went back about seventy

feet. I’d heard that a guy by the name of Simplot was in charge of that or initiated

that mining effort and used the South Trail, or the Squaw Trail to get down there.

K: No, I never did know any of the miners, really.

Q1: You mentioned some stories of Butch Cassidy going into the Maze and hiding

out in there. Did you ever see anything or evidence of his being in there?

K: Well, no, I never did see any evidence of that. And one old cowboy said that down there

at Horse Canyon there was a cave that they, the old cowboys, had camped in. And they had

a lot of names on the wall but I never did see the cave either in Horse Canyon. I was always

looking for it. But I don‘t know if it’s still there or not. But, no, them are just kind of legends

and stuff like that that you hear. That’s the only reason it was put in the book.

Q1: There’s that old stock trail that goes in at the head of Horse Canyon right at the

Park boundary. Don’t know anything about the history of that trail or hear anything

about that one?

K: Well, Art Ekkers said that the early…well, I guess, the rustlers made the trail down there

so that they could put their stolen horses down there and let ‘em cool off for a few years

before they brought ‘em out and sold ‘em and so on. And that’s the way other canyons

around the country’s got their names too. They’d keep their extra horses in there and get

some colts out of ‘em and stuff like that, I guess.


Q1: Well, there’s that big spring in Horse Canyon as you come out of South Fork and

start heading down to the Pour-off. And there’s an inscription down there that reads

“J. A.Y. died….” and I can’t remember the exact date.. March 16th (or something like

that), 1896, so it’s a pretty old inscription. I imagine maybe that trail was in use back

in that period.

K: Well, I’m sure it had. Seems like I’ve seen that inscription too.

Q1: It’s along the south side. I’d sure like to find out the story behind that one. Did

you take trips into Horseshoe Canyon?

K: Oh yes. We did lots of our trips through there. We come from Green River and follow

that old highway across there and then go into that Horseshoe Canyon and go up and see the

big panel and go out the other side of Hans Flats and then on down the Flint Trail down to

the Standing Rock country. We’d have that on our trip. And then finally the sand hill filled

up full of sand on the west side of the canyon and you couldn’t go up that but we could still

come down it. And so we did that for two or three years more. And then the Park Service

took over about that time and closed up that west side and so we didn’t use it anymore.

Q1: Do you remember when that was? When they closed it off?

K: Oh, it’d probably be around 1965 or something. I think the last trip we made across there

I’d probably have in one of my notebooks.

Q1: Did you ever hear of a canyon called Deer Canyon down in the Maze area?

K: Deer Canyon? I don’t think so.


Q1: Probably one of many names of things down there. Yeah well, as you start

reading more about people writing histories about that area, they are calling things by

all sorts of names.

F: I’ll tell you a story over there if you’re interested. I was here at home alone and Kent had

gone on a trip to Standing Rocks. At 10 o’clock at night my phone rang and someone says

“Mrs. Frost?” and I says, “Yes?” And he says, “Well, this is Dean Brimhall and I’m

supposed to give you a message from Kent.” And I says, “Alright” and he says “Well, Kent

is one mile south of Lizard Rock and he’s got a broken axle and he wants you to have one

flown over to him.” And I says, “Okay.” Anyway we knew Dick Smith real well because he

was a pilot and that. And I alerted Dick and told him what happened and so forth. And I

called up down here to see if they had an axle . No, they didn’t have one. I called Moab, no.

And Harry Randall he called Blanding and they didn’t. Harry Randall’s Kent’s cousin that

had the Motor Park. And they called over to Cortez. They just couldn’t find an axle for that

year of a Jeep. So anyway we hung up and I says to Harry, “This is July and they’ll be

thirsted to death by the time we get something over there.” And he says “I can have it flown

in by Frontier to Moab. And I says “When would that get done?” And he says, “Well, it’d

come in tomorrow probably.” And I said, “ Well they’d be thirsted to death by that time”

and I hung up. Pretty soon the phone rang again and it was this here cousin and he says,

“Fern, I found two of those axles and they’re in Blanding.” I said, “Good. I’ll go down and

get one.” So I went down and got this here axle and brought it up and went and got Dick

Smith. And he wrapped the axle up in newspaper and gunny sac. And I put a piece of frozen

meat in it and all that stuff. And anyway, he had a nylon parachute that was just about that

big around. And he says, “We’ll put this on the axle when we drop it. Why, it should be able

to come down. So he says, “I’m going over there alone so you might just as well fly over with

me.” And I says, “okay, I’ll fly with you.” So we went over there and we found this little

lonely Jeep over there about a mile south of Lizard Rock by one tree. And it was real hot

that day. And he says, “Well, there they are.” We went flying by, we went up over this here

rock cliff you know that goes over there west, and he says, “Well Fern, you can’t throw the


axle out your window. I have to throw it out my window, so you hold your hand on the gas

right here and when I tell you to push it, you push it in.” So here we come flying around and

he threw the axle out and we went towards that cliff and I kept saying, “Now? Now?” But

anyway he pushed in on my hand and we went zoomin’ up over that cliff. He says, “Well,

now I want to throw out a note.” So we took a piece of typewriter paper and he put “Kent,

if everything’s okay, sit in front of the Jeep. If it isn’t okay, write it in the sand.” So he

went around and he didn’t have no weight, no folding or anything to that paper and he just

threw it out the window. And I thought, “Oh no. That’ll be down in Cataract Canyon. This

spring they’ll get it.” But we went flying and we went above this cliff again and when we

come back there they was sitting in front of the Jeep. And he says, “ Well Fern, I’ve got a

flight on this afternoon and I’ll check over see if they get off.” But Kent said they had broken

a little piece of axle off, about two inches long or three and he worked with a piece of balin’

wire with a hook on it to get in there and pull that piece out and he got it out and he had that

Jeep all ready to push that axle in. And he said, “I was gone 15 minutes after you got

through.”

Q1: Wow

F: He says, “I thought I had it figured out that I was coming out on three wheels.”

Q1: Well, you certainly had to be resourceful back then on your trips… able to to

invent or…

K: Well, I was always pretty lucky. I’d generally only go with one vehicle. And that was oh

about the only time I seriously broke down any place. But anyway, that was about, oh, two

or three miles before you get to Lizard Rock. And it’s where you go over that there last real

steep, rocky, solid rock hill and down the other side. I used to call it Axle Hill because that’s

where I broke my axle. That’s the one that’s steep solid rock out there.


Q1: I know that one.

F: So I had to be prepared for many things.

Q2: How did the guy that called you, how did he get…?

F: Oh, he was over there. Dean Brimhall went over there often at that time.

K: Yeah, he come by with his Jeep and he was going down to the Doll House. So I told him

I’d like to have him take out a message when he come back by. And so I had it all written out

what I needed. And so when he got back to Fruita, why then that’s when he phoned.

Q1: Did you take Elzy Bird out to the Harvest scene? I know it’s called the Bird site

after him. And I’m not sure when he went in but it was in the 50s. Ever hear that

name?

K: I don’t think so.

Q1: He had something to do with painting that mural of Horseshoe Canyon.

K: Well, Lynn Fossit, that man that painted that picture, he did lots of mural painting. And

he painted them in the Tri-City hall and went all around the building with murals. And

anyway he made a great big canvas, about 50 feet long or more, of that big panel down in

Horseshoe Canyon. And that was along in the ‘30s when he made that. And anyway, they

finally dug that out after they made the National Park out of the country. And so they had

the first showing of that at this (Hammond Carter?) Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. So Fern

and I were invited to go over to that. So we went over and were special guests for the

(Hammond Carter?) Museum when they had this big mural hanging and folded around the

wall there. It was impressive. And I don’t know where that is at now. I would think it


should be displayed someplace. It was life-size, you know, of them, and a beautiful job of

painting.

F: The Price Museum must have it.

Q1: Well, there is a painting of the Holy Ghost and Attendants, life-size, at the Price

Museum.

K: Well, this was a great long canvas about, oh, 50 or 100 feet long or something. I don’t

know but it was real, real long.

Q2: You were going to ask about the road to the Mouth of Millard Canyon.

Q1: Oh yeah, did you ever get up to Anderson Bottom off of the Millard Canyon road?

K: Well, no. I wanted to ask you about that road. I always wanted to go up there and camp

overnight.

Q1: It’s in pretty good shape. You can do it . The campsite is right on the river at the

mouth of Millard Canyon. And there are old roads that go up into Millard Canyon. In

fact, Ted Ekker said that he…do you know Ted? From Green River?

K: Yeah, I Know Ted.

Q1: Working on a drilling operation out by Cleopatra’s Chair? Driving water up

from the Green River up Millard Canyon to the base of the cliffs and pumping it up to

the top to use for the drilling operation. And if you go out on that point…here it

is…[looking at the map] if you go out on this point here…


K: Well, I been up on them..

Q1: There’s an old road that goes out onto this And it’s along about right in here, you

see where they were doing that. They have the supports and everything set in place.

You can see the road came up: it didn’t come up to the Shinarump, it came up to

where the Moenkopi starts clipping out and it looks like that’s where they were

pumping up. But there’s a bunch of old roads down in here and another thing I’m

trying to find out is…

K: Well, I’ve seen some of this from up above.

Q1:Who was down in there. There’s old shacks down in there. Yeah, if you drive up

here it’s a little rough, it’s pretty slow going and you get right here and there’s the

camp site, a place to camp.

K: Well, I think I’d really like to go down in there this spring. I guess anytime now’d be

alright as long as there’s not any snow on the road to there.

Q1: Yeah, the Flint Trail might not open up right away but give it a little while for

the snow to melt off of it…

Well, have you seen the new Canyonlands Backcountry Management Plan.

K: Yeah, I’ve studied that pretty well.

Q1: What do you think of that, closing Salt Creek?

K: Well, I take a dim view on closing Salt Creek because then not very many people’d see it

if it were closed to vehicles. But the big thing I have about it….I agree that there’s a lot of

people that go on these here Jeep trips and four wheel excursions that don’t take time to see


the country. They just want to say they been there but that don’t do much good for ‘em to

go. But then other people that do appreciate going to that country would get kept out of

there too.

Q1: Can you think of any other aspects of the plan…?

K: Well, there again, if the Doll House is so far away from the Waterhole Flats that people

wouldn’t be able to walk over there and back in a day so they’d have to be strong back

packers and then they’d need to find water somewhere along the line if they went there.

Down there just off from the… I guess, the east end of Lizard Rock…I guess the west end of

Lizard Rock, down that canyon, there’s a big pot hole there and the stockmen have built a

stock trail down to that. I guess you knew about that one. And there’s a cave in there. It

looks like the Indians might a’ camped over right in that there little cave by the side of that

pot hole. I don’t know. I looked pretty closely at it and I don’t know.

F: They’re just gonna have to limit the amount of people that goes in there.

Q1: Well, that’s part of the purpose of the plan is to try to find some way to limit the

numbers so it’s not so crowded down there.

F: So many vehicles or something or…

Q1: So you’re in favor of trying to limit numbers then, or…?

F: I am.

K: Yes, I would think so.


F: We were the lucky ones. We just didn’t have anybody there. We just went. I wouldn’t

have liked to be there now. Too many people.

K: Well, that bunch from Arizona that we were traveling with last spring. We’d been to Baja

on four different trips with them. And, anyway, they just like to go jeeping some place. But

they don’t care much about seein’ the country, not really.

F: Yeah, a portion of ‘em, but not all of ‘em.

K: I’m embarassed the way they leave their camps, the great big piles of ashes layin’ around

and stuff like that. Of course, they gather in wood about twice what they need and then they

try to burn it all too before they leave. They don’t leave a clean camp like they should do.

Q1: Well, your camp there at Red Cove looked pretty clean…Range Canyon.

K: Well, yeah, we camped at Range Canyon. Well, I kept after ‘em tellin’ ‘em to keep things

clean around here. And I said, “Now don’t pour your damn coffee grounds in the fire. Let the

fire burn up till it makes ashes and it’ll blow away instead of leaving all that charcoal floatin’

around and things like that I’d tell ‘em about.

F: Kent, he’d camp and you never knew anybody’d camped there in a couple of days. He

always build a fire in a wash and he never used any more wood than what he needed, and let

it burn out so he didn’t have coals to cover and all that stuff. And then I’ve seen him go

around pickin’ up cigarette butts that people had throwed out. He says, “I know that I’m

gonna be back here to camp again,” and he says, “I have to have a clean camp.” So I seen him

keep it clean.


K: Well, at that time, we’d only used the same place maybe two or three times a year, you

know, or something and it didn’t get overused like they do when they use ‘em every day and

so we didn’t use the same spots.

F: Never cover up the fire with ashes. It’s there forever.

K: Well, yeah, they told us, oh well, they don’t want to start a forest fire. And then they

didn’t look around to see the rocks. They couldn’t burn ‘em very good either or they

wouldn’t say that. But anyway, that’s what they’re taught in the scout troops and

everything. And they don’t have to be so particular where there’s not a lot of trees. But,

anyway, the cowboys in that Salt Creek and a lot of other places they used to set the

sagebrush on fire so they could get through with their pack animals. And then the other kind

of food that come up the cows’d eat better too where they’d burn it off. And then the early

cowboys down on this Dark Canyon mesa, they’d ride along with a match and they’d strike

them as they went through these thick pinon forests trying to get them to burn up and make a

lot better vegetation for their stock after they burnt the trees off.

Q1: Well, how should we be trying to keep down the numbers in the Park?

K: Well, that’s a good question. I guess just let ‘em have a permit and limit the number of

days they can stay there, I guess.

Q1: No easy answers. Too many problems.

F: Too many people..(fades out)..can’t help that.

K: Well that book, the original title of it was My Canyonlands- I Had the Freedom of It. But

anyway the publisher decided to leave off the last half of that.


F: That and the inside.

K: Yeah

Q2: Well I think one of the problems was that when you guys were out there,

information was really scarce and you were explorers and finding all this out on your

own, but if you look now so much information has been published. So there’s…

F: We’re to blame. We’re to blame for that whole thing. We used to advertise like you

wouldn’t believe. And we charged $25 a day per person to go on a camping trip. And we

furnished all the food, the camping gear, the transportaion, and the guide service for $25 a

day.

K: Well, that was before inflation come along.

Q1: So when you guys went out there, did you jump off from Hanksville, gas up and

all that stuff? What about Hite? Did you gas up at Hite too?

F: Well, got some gas at Hite from Chaffin when there was a ferry.

K: Well, yeah, there was five of them jeep cans that’d just set in the back part of them little

jeeps. And so we’d have two or three of ‘em full of gas and two of ‘em full of water. And

that would take us quite a ways but they only had a ten gallon tank on them little jeeps and it

seems like they were always running out of gas. Down at Salt Creek there was a drilling outfit

down there that left a barrel of diesel fuel, was about three-fourths full of diesel fuel, when

they moved out and it set there for three or four months where they’d left it. So I loaded that

on my jeep one day and took it up there just at the entrance to Salt Creek. And the willows

and tamarisk were only about this high at the time and a lilttle cottonwood tree there. And I

backed over there and I rolled that out by that little cottonwood tree and kind of sat it on an


angle so that the water wouldn’t run it around the sides of the plugs. And anyway, whenever

I was down in that country and real low on gas I’d get some out of that barrel and mix it

about half and half with my gasoline and then I could run on back out to Monticello with

what I had left. And that saved me a lot of times from running out of gas and finally I used all

the whole thing up.

F: Same thing down the Mormon Trail.

K: And down the Mormon Trail at the Rincon, when the prospector moved out of there,

there was a barrel about half full of diesel fuel so I put that on the bumper of my jeep and

hauled it up to the top of Grey Mesa and cached it underneath a juniper tree and I used that

all up for a little bit of extra fuel.

Q2: When you’re in the Rincon, you look across the river, now you look across the

lake, there’s still a bunch of roads on the Chinle. Do you know how they got in

there? How’d you get into that side of the river?

K: There was an old oil drilling rig or something that the early miners moved up in there in

the early 20s or sometime. And I never did know much about it. And somebody wanted to go

down and rescue that old rig as the lake was coming up but the Park Service wouldn’t let ‘em

because …I don’t know why they wouldn’t let ‘em.

Q1: Did they come in from Hite on the north side? Was there a north cable across

the Rincon that they could get across the river. That’s a long ways down from Hite

and I wasn’t sure if they had a road.

K: Oh, I think they ferried that up from Lee’s Ferry. Because down there, just on the west

side of that Water Pocket Fold where it got down to the river bottom, there’s some oil seeps

along there. And I was down there on a trip to Glen Canyon one time and here was a little


drill stem that was about twenty feet long layin’ there and then there was a little bit of other

old oil drilling equipment layin’ at that place. And see that was a long ways up from Lee’s

Ferry that they’d had to bring that.

Q2: You know on the White Rim, when you get out to White Crack, that road that

goes way out…it’s a long walk. We’ve walked out there and then got over to look at

the confluence from that side and then there’s an old sled that looks like it might

have had a shack on it that they drug out there and a bunch of drill pipe. Do you know

what that is? What were they drilling for out there?

K: Oh, they found a little bit of uranium in the Moencopi formation, I think, just below the

Cedar Mesa sandstone and they might have been interested in drilling for that.

Q1: When you took your trips through Horseshoe, did you ever see anybody out there

at the Tidwell Ranch? Were there sheepherders out there?

K: Yeah, there was a sheepherder that camped there in the winter time. And that old cabin

was in pretty good condition when I first went through there.

Q1: That was in the ‘50s?

K: Yeah, and then down in the bottom, by that spring where they had that pump, water

pump, they had an old Studebaker truck. They had a van body on the back of it, big van

body, and they used that for storage for grain and stuff like that for livestock. And the road

wasn’t too bad goin’ right on across that Horseshoe Canyon and up past that…uh…

Q1: Did you see that pumphouse in operation? Were they using it?


K: No, I was never there when they was pumping. But I was there when they had sheep in

the area and they’d run the sheep right on down the bottom of the canyon.

Q1: Did they dredge it out? Did they dredge it out and make a dam? Did you ever

see anything like that by the pumphouse?

K: Well, yeah, they did have a little sand bank there and the water was probably only three

or four feet deep in it. In the springtime when we got there they would… it was probably

about the time they got through pumping.

Q1: Somebody told me recently that they used to drive their jeeps up into The Alcove

there in Horseshoe Canyon, the big alcove about halfway between the pumphouse and

the Great Gallery? Did you ever do that or see anybody doing that? Right now it’s a

cut bank about ten feet.

K: I noticed that when I was down there a few years ago and no, but, on that there smooth

rock just below there, we camped there a few times and then the people carried their sleeping

bag up to the inside of it. But I don’t remember seein’ any jeep tracks inside that cave.

Q1: Did you ever see any jeep tracks going up from the Great Gallery, upstream,

south?

K: Yeah, I’ve driven up there to a rough area, a narrow place in the canyon. And there’s

spring water there. I’ve been up to that far.

Q1: But you didn’t see anybody going…

K: No, not as far as I know. I camped up in there one night. We used to camp quite often

under that big gallery on the gravel bottom there.


Q1: Did you go down the canyon toward the Green?

K: I’ve walked down as far as where it got real rough one time and then I seen that..oh, it

looked like an old horse trail goin’ down the side of it. And I never did get a chance to go on

down.

Q1: I’ve always wondered if they took horses all the way down through there. Right

now there’s no evidence of any trails on down in there, maybe because the floods have

washed everything out. They’ve had some pretty big floods in there.

K: Well, I thought Ted Ekker told me that they’d run some of their commercial trips down

that.

Q1: I heard that too and was just wondering.

.Q1: Well one other story I’d like to get on tape if we haven’t talked too much. Ward

Roylance was saying that maybe in the early ‘60s you were driving over Elephant Hill

and you got to the bottom and had some medical problem? He said to make sure to

ask you about that.

K: You want to tell ‘em that story?

F: I don’t care. What was it… we figured it was 1964?

K: Yes, 1964.

F: April of 1964. Kent and I had the responsibility of about 65 people and our drivers and

the Park Service, Utah State Park, oh a lot of ‘em was dignitaries. And so we both driove of


course, and I had to furnish all the lunch for the whole gang. And we drove down there and

went over Elephant Hill, went to Chesler Park, that area and then we went over to the

junction of the river area, and had lunch at the junction of the river campground. And so Kent

got in his jeep and started out. And I had two men. It was Harold Fabian and Mr. (Koziall?).

This Harold Fabian, he was the head of the State Parks at that time. And so I drove behind

Kent and we went up over Elephant Hill and we got up on top of Elephant Hill and I says to

these two guys, I says “Would you like to stop here and watch some of the other vehicles

come up the steep hill?” And they says’ “Sure.” So we stopped there and watched several of

the vehicles come up. Got tired of that so we finally decided to leave. We left and started

down this side of Elephant Hill. And there’s this couple of girls from Monticello, Cleon

Cooper and Margaret Halls. I knew ‘em. They was watching all these vehicles travel. So we

went on and there was a Jeep behind me and it was my neighbor over here. He was one of

our drivers. And as we went along why I always told people some of Kent’s experiences out

in the country. And I don’t remember the story I was telling ‘em but anyway I could feel my

right hand side of my face paralyze. I couldn’t talk. And so I knew something was wrong so I

of course tried to push on the clutch. I knew I had to do something. I wasn’t going very fast

and it was over between Squaw Flats and Elephant Hill. And so we were going along and I

guess these two guys that were going along as passengers could see something was wrong so

they turned the key off. And we went over and there was a little ditch, or a ravine, that went

down. I started down that little ravine and started up the hill and my neighbor over here, he

says that vehicle slowly came back down to the bottom of that ravine and stopped. And

Kent’s cousin was behind this guy over here and he come up and between him and some

other guys, why they got me out of the jeep and put me on a blanket. And I had passed out

and when I came to, why, this Harry he says, “Fern, where do you hurt? Where do you

hurt?” I thought I’d say “I hurt right there.” I had clawed that clutch and just bruised my foot

like you wouldn’t believe. And so anyway, they got Kent, went up and got him and he came

back. They got me into a car and brought me into the hospital. And the two doctors down

here knew me very well. And anyway, they’d stick a needle in my back about so long and so

big and then they’d say, “Fern, looks like pressure but we can’t tell you what it is.” And


they did that about three times with me for the next couple of days. Dr Goon, at that time he

was our doctor, he says, “Fern, the only thing I can think of is we’d better send you to Salt

Lake to Dr. Powell who is a neurologist up there and see what he says. So Kent took me up

to Salt Lake and when we got up there, why, the first thing they did was they came in with

this big long needle and stick it in my back. And they says, “Shows pressure. We can’t tell

you what it is.” And so they let me stay there overnight and then the doctor came in and he

says, “Fern, I have one other (tape ran out…new tape, but some of the content was missed)

in the operating room. They let the head down and you laid back right on your back and then

they let your head down. And he came in with a needle and he says, “Fern, this needle has

what will feel like half a cup of coffee. I’m gonna stick that into your throat right here. I’m

gonna to try to find your jugular vein.” So here he was stickin’ that in there and says, “Ya

gotta hold right still”. So they were sticking it in there and finally pushed it into the jugular

vein I could feel. And he took an x-ray immediately after that. And they come back in and

they says, “Well, we found your problem.” And I says, “Oh?” And they says, “Yeah,

you’ve got a tumor over your right temple about the size of a small orange.” So anyway, the

doctor talked it over with Kent and me and they decided to operate on me. And they took

me in and they operated on it, cut it out, and gave me seven pints of blood. And they put me

into the intensive care. And the guy across the aisle, he threw his urinal out at the nurse.

When they moved me out of that room, where the urinal was, this nurse says, “Well, Fern,

don’t worry about it. You won’t get a urinal thrown at you.” But when I opened my eyes,

why there my mother and dad from Mesa, Arizona, stood. I told my sister-in-law to tell ‘em

and she did and they come clear up there to be there when I was operated on. And they put

me into this here hospital room. And you would have thought there was a dignitary in there.

Everybody that ever knew us on a Jeep trip sent flowers and everybody would come and

they’d say, “Is this where Mrs. Frost is? Here’s some more flowers, here’s some more

flowers.” When I got so I could walk out in the hallway…we had fifteen of those people at

the Holy Cross Hospital on one of our tours out here…and the guy that was the head of the

hospital he seen me and came and talked to me. And he says, “Wait just right here. I want

you to talk to this one guy.”So he called the little intern over there and he says, “I want you


to meet this woman.” And he says,” This woman’s got the strength of three men.” Of

course, I didn’t at that time. But then the doctor says, “Fern, I want you to go home and I

want you to start driving. If you get dizzy or if you feel like you’re goiung to faint or

anything, just pull of the side of the road and stop and sleep it off.” So anyway, in a few

days after I got home I started driving and you know to this day, I’ve never had any trouble.

I never had any dizzy spells I never had any headaches before or after.

Q1: And you went over Elephant Hill again then?

F: Oh heavens! Many times, many times, and Salt Creek many times. I had two couples

with me one day going with me up Salt Creek to Angel Arch and we were coming out and it

was real dry sand. And I guess with the tires round, it was about 6 to 8 inches deep, so you

can see it was pretty deep sand. And I says to my guests, I says, “What would you say if I

picked up a man’s wallet?” They says, “What?” I says, “Yeah, what would you say about

that?” And I stopped and got out of my vehicle, went out in front and there was this wallet,

just barely stuck out of the sand. And I got it and took it down to the Headquarters and I

told ‘em who I thought it might be, this guy with a red Jeep with no top, and all that stuff.

And so he took my name and everything. The next day I was going over to the resort. And a

lady was a-wavin’ me down. I stopped and I says, “What can I do for you?” And she

handed me five dollars. And I says, “What’s this for?” She says, “Well, you found our wallet

yesterday and I wanted to give this to you.” I said, “ I don’t want your money. Sorry.” And

anyway, I got a nice Christmas card from ‘em the next Christmas. But you could find

anything out there.

Q1: All those years going into the Maze and the Dollhouse, did you ever run into

anybody else, any other people camping or exploring out in there?

F: No. We were just on our own. That was the best time. We usually had, oh maybe two

vehicles going but we spent a lot of time without anybody. We went down the Mormon


Trail and that was our last exploration. Down to Hole in the Rock, Cottonwood. That was

Kent’s favorite.

Q2: I’ve walked out there to Wilson Mesa and I don’t think I’d care to drive it.

F: Oh? Oh by the way, I was the very first person and a woman to ever drive a vehicle

down to the Cottonwood Canyon. Kent and another guy walked and showed me the trail but

I drove every bit of it.

Q2: I guess you’d drive to the top of Cottonwood but not down those others

F: Yeah, we’d go down to the top of Cottonwood.

Q2: We went down there and there’s a BLM sign that says it’s the old Mormon Trail.

And I told my wife, I says, “well, this is in an odd position” because, looking right

from the canyon. And then we went down and hiked up and I found out later that’s the

old minerals road. We missed the Mormon Trail. So I gotta go back out there. We

walked out from camp and then we went from there on a day hike from there to

Wilson Mesa and back and that was really great.

F: The last time I was down there I said, “This is it. No more” I’m not going down there

anymore, the road’s getting worse and worse.

K: Well, yea that was about three or four years ago and it was pretty rugged then. That old

Blazer would just barely make it, I thought.

Q2: Well that’s after we did it. We walked before that and it was maybe seven years

ago and there was a place where the sand was so soft that it looked like every vehicle

that ever tried to go by there would get caught in it, you know. Then there was


another place that I don’t even know how you’d get off, it’s just a ledge, sloping. And

that wasn’t even the part that most people describe as the rought part of it, you know?

F: Kent and I went down there by ourselves one time and he had a metal detector. And we

decided to metal detect a cave that was down there in Lake Canyon. So he used that and got a

couple of pieces of metal off of a wagon. I says, “I’m going up here along this here, north of

Lake Canyon, up on those rocks. So I went up there and do you know what I came up with?

An 1872 dime! The dime looked like it had been tipped over and sandblasted on both sides

but you can tell it’s an 1872 dime. And they came through there in 1880 so I know they

dropped it.

Q2: So were you out there when the old sand dam went across the canyon, that they

used?

K: That washed out in 1916.[New addition: The story I hears was that Al Scorup was

camped by the lake when it washed out because livestock had destroyed all the grass and

vegetation on the sand dam. K.F.]

Q2: Oh, okay.

F: What’s his name? Corbin? Corbin was it? That seen it go out?

K: Well, now this J.A. Scorup was down there the time of the cowboys and they watched it

flood out. But that’s amazing that all the way down that canyon, see there’s been… some

places have silt banks for a 100 feet high. And where the dam was it must have been about

three hundred feet deep. That whole canyon was filled with that sand about three hundred

feet deep. That’s all washed out. I been all the way down that to the Colorado River and you

couldn’t believe how deep that sand was through that canyon. But it washed out to bedrock

most all the way down to that lower part, before the lake came up.


F: Kent is the great-grandson of Mons Larsen that came through there with his second wife,

Kent’s grandmother went south through Lee’s Ferry and Snowflake. But this here Olivia she

had her baby up on Grand Mesa in the storm. And so he’s the great grandson of that Mons

Larsen.

Q2: Is that why you…in your book you start off you were in Bluff.

F: Well they went to Bluff after. They weren’t born and rtaised down there.

K: We just lived down there one winter in Bluff. I was raised on this homestead on Dodge

Point, ten miles south of here.

F: He was born in Snowflake.

Q2: Oh, okay.

F: Me, I been here 45 years now. I was born and raised in American Fork.

Q2: Oh, Okay. Every year they get together. It used to be that Crampton would be

down at Wahweap and then Crabtree would come to Bullfrog. And they’d talk about

the Hole in the Rock and then they would take a tour boat from each of the marinas

and go over to Cottonwood Canyon and actually hike up there and talk about the

history. They’d do that every year. I guess Crampton doesn’t do it anymore. He

retired in St. George but I think he’s now down in Sun City.

Q1: Did you ever hear anything about Ernie, Ernie Larson? That country’s named

Ernie’s country. Did you ever hear any stories about him?


K: About who’s that?

Q1: Ernie, Ernie Larson.

K: Ernie’s Country? No.

Q1: I can’t find anybody that knows anything about him. Well that’s the name I’ve

heard but you know the old maps show that whole area – the Maze, Standing Rocks,

all the way up to Anderson Bottoms-as being Ernie, Ernie Country, not Ernie’s

Country. I’ve often wondered who this Ernie was. I thnk I got the name Larson from

Pearl Baker from some of the stuff I’d read that she’d written but she didn’t know

much about him either. [New addition: Refer to Ned Chaffin Oral History account of

Under the Ledge Country. K.F.]

Q2: In your book, you talk about a cowboy that you admire. I think Turk was his

name?

K: Curt

Q2: Curt?

F: Curt? Cowboy?

K: Curt who?

Q2: I was thinking it was Turk. I was wondering if Turk sounded right.

K:[New Addition: While living at Old La Sal Ranch about 1927 an old man named Joe Turk

had a cabin nearby and Joe was bnald headed and had a large and a small lump on his head.


Well, I asked one of the cowboys, “Why the lumps?” The cowboy said Joe was fighting

with another man and was hit on the head with a club which had a large and a small knot

which caused the two lumps. K.F.]

F: Some of the cowboys Kent should know. Some of the cowboys you knew down at

Dugout.

K: Down at Dugout Ranch? There was Doyle Perkins, they call him Perk.

Q2: I just thought it said Turk and I was wondering if Turk’s Head might have been

named for him or something.

K: Oh there’s one called Kirk’s cabin down there in Salt Creek, way up at the upper end of

Salt Creek. That’s K-i-r-k, I believe, Kirk’s cabin.

Q2: Okay

F: Then there was the guy…Musselman.

K: Musselman? Oh yeah, Ross or Roy Musselman was an old trapper that used to be in the

country around here.

Q1: Did you know him?

K: Yeah, I’ve talked to old Roy quite a bit. And I camped with him that one night down in

Lost Canyon, right down near Cave Spring Camp. I camped all night with him there. I hiked

all the way through the Needles country and across Beef Basin and Fable Valley and up on

Dark Canyon Mesa. And that’s where the coyotes come up to my camp and howled around

my camp in the middle of the night. I was about scared to death. I thought they was gonna eat


me up. They didn’t. So anyway I went back out. I was just livin’ off the country down there

too mostly and sleeping by a campfire. And so, when I got back down there I stopped to

have lunch at the east side of Elephant Hill. There’s a little spring there. So I was drinkin’

water out of the trough and eatin’ some dried corn meal and some nuts that I had. And I was

walkin’ on down the trail and I was half asleep. And just a little ways down from the

Elephant Hill, why this guy, a coyote, howled right beside of me. I was goin’ along half

asleep because it was a warm sunny afternoon and I was tired. And this coyote howled and I

grabbed my pistol. And this ol’ Roy Musselman standin’ there, about fifty feet away by the

horse there he was right just behind a tree. And he was just laughin’ and laughin’. He thought

that was the best joke he’d had all winter I guess. Scared me to death. And so he invited me to

come and stay at his camp that night. I said, yeah, I’d like to do that ‘cause I didn’t have any

groceries left. I was a long ways from the Dugout Ranch. So I went and camped overnight

with him. And then the next day I walked up to the Dugout Ranch.

Q2: Was he a governmenmt trapper?

K: Well, no he worked for the Scorup-Somerville Cattle Co. And they would pay him, I

think, a dollar a piece for the coyote bounty. And then he could have the fur and sell that

where he wanted to. And so it kept him goin’ and he was happy doing that, you know. So

he’d live down in the low country in the winter and then up in the mountains in the

summertime. If a bear or lion that had bothered any of the livestock, why then he’d go catch

them.

Q1: Did he ever get over in the Maze country?

K: I don’t think he did. No, he just stayed on this side. He came from Washington or

Oregon, up in that country. And he come to this area because there was about ten wolves

down here around Bluff to Mexican Hat and Moab country south of here that was eatin’ their

livestock. And nobody could catch this here one wolf that they called Big Foot. And so Roy


Musselman, he came here and they were supposed to pay him a thousand dollars if he caught

Big Foot. So he caught all the wolves and then Big Foot was the last one he caught. And,

anyway, there was some of the judges that tried to determine if that Big Foot was the right

one or not. And I don’t know, there was some kind of trouble with the settlement and I

don’t think he ever got his full payment for catchin’ Big Foot. But there weren’t any more

wolves after that except one female wolf. And when I camped with Roy that night he said,

“Well there was this one female wolf that I never could catch along in the late ‘20s, I mean the

early 20s when he was trappin’ ‘em. But she mixed with the coyotes and she had a whole lot

of coyote pups and he says, “That’s why these coyotes around in this part of the country,

especially from Indian Creek on southward, have much bigger tracks than the ones on the

surrounding country. And he says they’re halfbreeds from that there one female wolf that he

never could catch. And I always noticed how big the coyote tracks were, they were so much

bigger than the ones on the other side of the Green River and the Colorado River and he said

that was the reason. But now you don’t notice so much difference in the tracks anymore as

you did there in for along through the ‘30s and ‘40s, early 50s, I guess.

Q1: There’s an R. Musselman inscription in a cave in Spur Fork, 1928, and that’s why

I asked if he’d ever been over there by the Biddlecomes or Ekkers.

K: Well, he had a brother named Ross Musselman and Ross Musselman run commercial

tours. He started that in 1933. He moved from New Jersey out here and settled out here on

Boulder, about ten miles east of Monticello. And he was Roy’s brother and then Roy took

him around this country and showed him the country. So, he was something in connection

with a school counselor or something. So he decided this would bre a good place to bring a lot

of the young boys and their parents, young people and their parents, out here from New

Jersey. So he run commercial horse trips out in this back country over to around through the

Needles and down through there and come out at the Dugout Ranch. But he could have been

travelin’ anyplace in later years when he got the Jeeps to travel in. So it could be… and see it

could even be Ross Musselman or Roy Musselman. And then Ross Musselman had a boy


and his name’s Rusty and he lives out here about six miles on the edge of Peters Hill here. He

used to be the County sheriff too. He’s the son of Ross Musselman. And he was helpin’ his

dad in connection with those commercial horse pack trips too.

Q1: You were taking people into Horseshoe Canyon. Were the Ekkers taking people

in at that time or did that come later?

F: They was flying.

K: That came later. We were always good friends with Art Ekker and Hazel. And so

anyway, later, Hazel got the idea that they would like to have a public service permit to haul

people in motor vehicles. And so we went with them to the Public Service Commission and

recommended that they give ‘em a permit for over there in that Robbers Roost country in

connection with the ranch. We helped ‘em get that permit. I guess A.C. still does some tours

out there, doesn’t he?

Q1: He hasn’t lately but he was for awhile.

K: Do they still have those wild burros running down in that canyon?

Q1: Uh-huh. Did you ever see any wild burros, by the way? You said you saw the two

mules down there.

K: I only seen I think two burros one time down in that Horseshoe Canyon.

Q1: In Horseshoe? Did you ever see any in the Maze or Standing Rocks?

K: No.


Q2: Did you see any Bighorn Sheep out there anywhere?

K: No. The deer seem to migrate from this Elk Mountain and Blue Mountain country down

and across the river at Spanish Bottom and go up in there in that country. I was there in

November a couple of times and there was quite a lot of deer around the Doll House, Standing

Rocks country.

Q2: Do you go along with the story of the Old Spanish Trail coming across at

Spanish Bottom? I’ve read someplace that there was a ford on the Colorado River

between the confluence and Spanish Bottom. Did you ever hear about that? Course I

suppose it was used at low water to ride a horse across.

K: You mean a ford for fording the river?

Q2: Yeah, it was above Spanish Bottom, not too far from the confluence. I’ve seen it

referred to a few times but it’s…

K: Well, no. There’s no place they could get livestock into that Green River Canyon, is

there?

Q2: Well, it’d be on the Colorado, below the Confluence…somplace between Spanish

Bottom and the confluence. There’s books that I’ve read a few times where there was

a place during the low water that you could actually ford the river.

K: Well, yea, there’d have to be a place there you could cross if they did that. And, no, I

don’t know right where its supposed to be. I never did know anything about that.

F: One time I took Kent and Goldman down to Mineral Canyon so he could make a raft and

they could raft down the river to Spanish Bottom. He had truck inner tubes…


K: Yup, four truck inner tubes. Big ones.

F: Dynamite fuse, dynamite boxes…what else? But I was to take ‘em down there and they

were gonna float down the river and visit all the side canyons as they went down to Spanish

Bottom. So anyway, I took ‘em down. And I came up the hill there in Mineral Canyon. I

didn’t like it very well but I did. And I came here to town. And they were supposed to be

gone so many days. I was supposed to take, another guy and me, take two Jeeps down to

Red Canyon [Red Lake Canyon] on this side of the river and leave a Jeep and then come out

together in the other Jeep. So we did that. And one day I…. the sheriff’s name was King and

he came up to me and he says, “Fern, is Kent used to leaving his wallet on the river bank?” I

said “No, he’s not.” He says, “Well, some boys came up after being down at the junction of

the rivers and said they’d found Kent’s wallet.” And I said, “Well, Max, “I says, “he’s going

down the river and he’s visiting all the side canyons as he goes down, and so forth. And he’s

supposed to be home this certain day and I’ve got a Jeep sittin’ down there for him. He’ll be

back.” So anyway, what these kids had done was they got on down there and got into the

bushes and found his raft that was stored while him and the Goldmans went up to the

Standing Rocks and hiked around and then come back down. When he came back, he says it

looked like somebody had been in his pack but didn’t do anything. They rafted across the

river, come up and got the Jeep and come home. And I was supposed to think that his wallet

was down there. Kent said “I had that wallet clear to the bottom of my pack and those kids

had got in there and found it.”

K: Well. I guess they were just curious. They didn’t take anything out of it as far as I could

tell.

Q1: That was quite an adventure I bet. Did you get up into some of those canyons

then?


K: Well we hiked up the Spanish Trail into the Doll House and then went from there over to

Water Canyon and then on further north from Water Canyon around into several of them

other little ones comin’ up in there, went into the Green River. And then we finally turned

around and came back out of Water Canyon.

Q1: You did a lot of these long hikes before backpacking really was a sport or not

many people did much of it. Did you have a backpack, a rucksack, or what kind of

equipment did you carry.

K: I started out without carryin’ anything. Maybe I carried a little kind of bag I could throw

on one shoulder. And then I had a .38 special pistol I could shoot good with so I could knock

over a rabbit or a bird.

F: Tell ‘em about goin’ down to The Rincon.

Q1: Where?

F: Down to The Rincon, makin’ a raft…

K: Anyway I was able to get around through the country real well. And when I went through

the Needles country the first time in 1940, it was in the last of February and I walked from

the Dugout Ranch then down to Cave Spring and camped there the first night. And all I

carried on that trip was, oh, I started out with about probably 5 pounds of cornmeal mush

and three or four pounds of raisins and that was about all I had in my pack. Then I had a

little canvas, about six feet square. And so, I’d have a fire a night. And I laid down on that.

And I’d have my fire out away from the wall so I’d try to get an overhang and then the fire

would reflect heat down on me. And I could sleep real good that way. But what I learned to

do was get a big pinyon log, as big as I could drag in, and then start the fire in the center of it

and burn in two and then I could push the ends together and it’d burn all night that way. I’d


just need a few little pieces to keep it goin’ with. And it didn’t take very much wood. And

so I went all the way south and then through Devil’s Lane and went down the Cross Canyon

route over across Beef Basin and climbed up onto the mesa into Fable Valley and then out

Fable Valley over onto Dark Canyon mesa. And then I kind of came back about somewhat

near the same route coming back through. And I was on horse trails part of the time but I

didn’t find the horse trail across Elephant Hill goin’ over but on the way back, then I

followed the horse trail coming back over Elephant Hill. And I was gone about six or seven

days on that trip and I got along just fine. And then the Goldmans, another time they come

out and they wanted to do a hike around Navajo Mountain. And that was in, uh… See they

made that bulldozer trail down on this Mormon Trail country in 1958. And this was

probably about 1960 when they come out to do Navajo Mountain. And so we took the Jeep

down to The Rincon and I left it parked there. And I had four big truck inner tubes and they

puffed them up with lung power. And then there was a lot of wreckage the prospectors left

there at Ricon where they had camped right at the edge of the river, and a whole row of

dynamite fuse that they didn’t use. And so anyway I had a lot of string with me, lines with

me to tie things together with, but that dynamite fuse worked real good anyway. And so I

just lashed all them tubes and 2x4’s and stuff like that on top of that to make the deck for a

raft. And used mostly dynamite fuse I got or salvaged from their camp to tie it together with.

And then we had some dynamite boxes there that we, uh… empty boxes we used them for

seats for sittin’on that raft and controlled it with two canoe paddles. I know we went just

floatin’ right on down from the Rincon then all the way down to the Rainbow Bridge. And

there we abandoned the raft. And this was in November. And so we hiked up past the

Rainbow Bridge. The night we got there, we camped there near the Rianbow Bridge. And just

a little ways below it there’s a great big cave up a little side canyon. And we climbed up into

it. And it rained all night. So we was ucky to have that cave to camp in and so we camped

there. And then the next day we went on and got on that trail that went around the north side

of Navajo Mountain and we headed eastward around the mountain. And it was a real cold,

cloudy day that day and looked like rain. So we kept hikin’ and hikin’ and didn’t find a place

to camp over there on Navajo Mountain. Finally just… it was startin’to… getting ready to


get dark, why here was a big cave on the side, only it had quite a sloping floor in it. And so

we went in that one and had plenty of room to camp but we had to kind of scoop out a place

to lay down. And, so we just got in that camp and got through with dinner and everything

that night and it started pourin’ rain. Just poured and poured for two or three hours. And we

was sure glad we had had a cave that night too. ‘Cause we didn’t have a tent or anything for

rain gear hardly on the trip. So then the next day we got plumb on over to the east end of

Navajo Mountain. And there was a… that’s where the trail goes northward down what they

call Trail Canyon to the San Juan River. And there’s another trail that goes out further

northward and goes up across Grey Mesa. And it’s just a little ways from… anyway the San

Jaun River from there, it’s not very far over to the The Rincon. So we walked up over the

mesa and down to The Rincon where the jeep was parked and come on back.

F: Yeah, but when you crossed the river you had to wade it and use a stick to hold in your

hand.

K: Yeah, the river was quite deep there, up to our knees and swift. It was real wide. And so

we got a staff and held that with one hand and held hands with the others that was wadin’

across that ice cold water. Our feet was about froze when we got on the other side. There

was some big dark colored slabs of rock layin’ there so we stood on them and our feet

warmed up and then we went on across there.

F: To the Rincon to get the Jeep.

Q2: You say in the book when you worked for Norman Nevills I believe that you got to

the mouth of the San Juan and the San Juan was dry. Is that true?

K: Yeah, that was on a trip my cousin and I… We walked to the top of the mountain here at

the head of Spring Creek Pass and from there on westward pass the Natural Bridges and then

down White Canyon and come out at Hite. And that’s where Art Chaffin built this little boat


for us and we floated from there down to Lee’s Ferry. And when we come to the San Juan

River it was completely dry. I’ve been down through the San Juan River and down to Lee’s

Ferry the year before on the Nevills expedition as a boatman. And so I knew what it was like

from there. And when I come to the San Juan River and there it was…it was dry. We

walked up it a quarter of a mile. We thought we might find a pool that had some fish in it or

something to catch but there wasn’t any pools of water or anything. It was just dry sand.

Q2: It’s hard to imagine the San Juan drying up. I’ve read accounts where that’s

happened.

K: Well it was sure dry that time.

F: Nobody’s had the experiences that he’s had.

Q1: Well, on these long treks what did you do for water? Did you carry some with you

or did you just count on finding the water?

K: I generally found it along the way.

Q1: So you didn’t even have a canteen?

K: Well, later I started carrying a canteen.

Q1: Wow

F: When I married him he didn’t even know what an air mattress was, or a sleeping bag. He

got so he got an air mattress and then a little more and a little more.

Q1: You must have had quite a knack for finding water in this country.


K: Well, I’ve drunk water that didn’t taste very good.

F: That’s why he’s always been so careful when he come to water. Didn’t wash his feet or

something in it for fear somebody else would come and drink it.

K: Well, yeah but I drank a lot of that water that the cows had washed their feet in and that’s

definitely not clean.

Q1: Cows aren’t very careful.

F: These city people they don’t know beans about camping. And finally I got to the point I

said, “Kent, you’re gonna bring those people in here and sit ‘em down and tell ‘em a few

rules and regulations before we go so that you don’t have to get after ‘em out there. They

will know what’s goin’ on.” So he’d bring ‘em in and have his little shovel, and he’d say

“Here’s a shovel. When you go behind a bush now you dig a hole and bury it.” So he was

real particular about that country out there.

Q1: That’s a big problem that we’re struggling with in the Park. How to deal with

the human waste situation. In The Maze, particularly, you can’t go easily go and

pump out a toilet.

F: Well, these people they don’t know nothin’, from the city. They just don’t know

anything.

K: Where are you guys headed for now when you leave here?

Q1: We’re headed back. Thanks a lot for talking to us. We really appreciate it.

kent & fern frostcentralpt.com/upload/345/2860_frost.pdf · kent & fern frost february 1994...

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